Thursday, October 15, 2015

The Flash

Malaysia's attorney general had his maiden press conference on Tuesday. He took eighteen minutes (according to The Star) to read two 3-page statements. Pertaining to SOSMA and 1MDB. On SOSMA, Mohd Apandi Ali (left) stressed that Khairuddin Abu Hassan and Mathias Chang were not charged in court on Monday under the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 but Section 124L of the Penal Code, which is asecurity offence nevertheless. [For background info, kindly readmy blogpost "SOSMA Arrests" dated October 09,2015].

And more menacingly, he added that SOSMA covered all security offences and was not limited to terrorism and terrorists.

On 1MDB, he was referring to Bank Negara’s public complaints on the troubled state fund. They are like a dog playing a game of tug with 1MDB’s trouser leg. And they don’t want to let go.

Anyway, Mohd Apandi Ali cleared 1MDB of any wrongdoing. He maintained stoically that there was no evidence the fund's officials had knowingly flouted the law. Was he really saying that there was no hanky-panky? That even if there was, it was done unknowingly?

Instead, the A-G pinned the blame on Bank Negara Malaysia for not requesting further information from 1MDB, stopping the remittance or directing Deutsche Bank (Malaysia) Bhd to advise the state fund to revert to the central bank for a review of the permission – despite being the gatekeeper.

I think he acts more like an 1MDB lawyer than an Attorney-General.

The Star had described it as a lightning-fast press conference. The A-G did not even take any questions from the more than fifty journalists present. He makes a good candidate if Hollywood wants to do a movie based on the DC comic book superhero The Flash.

I did not wait until the Taylor’s College Toastmasters meeting ended, instead, I hurried to KL’s TTDI to attend the joint WIM-CIMA Toastmasters meeting. I was the General Evaluator yesterday evening.

A good meeting and there was one speech that stood out – Suzainur KA Rahman’s “Musings of a Serial Killer”. She had presented a monodrama from the Interpretive Reading Advanced manual. Interestingly, it was her very own original script.